This has been my excuse for introducing to you a lecture on such an oft-told tale. I am aware that I am rather out of date, and that the more seasonable time to speak of Wellington was when the nation was recalling all his great deeds, in order worthily to celebrate his obsequies. I shall make no apology for this, as Wellington can never be out of season to the hearts of his grateful countrymen. Men lecture now on Columbus, and Oliver Cromwell; and we ought to know as much of our great national hero as of them, or of any of the heroes of antiquity. Wellington and Waterloo will be ever fresh and immortal in the hearts of Englishmen. When Demosthenes wanted to stir up the Athenians to a high pitch of enthusiasm, he used this form of adjuration1-" by those that fell at Marathon ;" and if the time should come in after ages, which God forbid! when some yet unborn orator should need to remind the British of their true place in the scale of nations, and of their fallen greatness, I imagine he would adjure them "by the memory of those that fell at Waterloo." Yes! Agincourt may be forgot, The great man, on whom I have now concluded my remarks, has to live in three different epochs of time. Our fathers knew him as cotemporaries; every paper at their breakfast-table spoke of his newest title to fame. 1 Demosthenes de Corona, quoted and extolled by Longinus. 2 Sir Walter Scott. We know him (it is our privilege to have done so) as the grey-headed man, half living in a past, and half in the present age, of whom they loved to tell us. Our children shall know him, according as we hand down his portrait to posterity. Common gratitude for the blessings of national prosperity which we still enjoy, under God, through him, should urge us to paint his likeness in the completeness of every feature, and to hand down to ages yet unborn, as perfect as we can, all that posterity can receive of him, the memory of his truly English greatness, and the heritage of his untarnished example. LECTURE II. THOSE Of you who were not of the audience I had the pleasure of addressing in this room on the 16th of February, must be informed that what I have to say tonight is a continuation of the subject which I was then unable to finish. As to the bearings of my lecture-and my reason for selecting the subject I have-I will just say a few words. It had struck me in all that I had read about the great Duke, that he, more than any man who ever lived, has contributed to stamp a character upon our nation—and that, not by any extraordinary and uncommon talentsbut by simplicity of character and singleness of aim, which qualities are within the reach of every one that I now address. I thought therefore that a sketch of this great man's life might be made very useful-for we imbibe lessons from history and especially from biography-far more readily and far more agreeably than we do from dogmatic teaching and mere precepts. If you have ever watched a good story-teller, you have, no doubt, observed that he always adds an interest to his anecdotes by telling them of some one, by linking his facts to a name. In the same way the novelist personifies his facts and makes them interesting by group1 Given at Sevenoaks, June 29, 1854. F ing them round some fictitious beings. By this means he enlists the sympathies of his readers so strongly that at the end of the third volume one almost fancies oneself at the wedding, when the heroes and heroines "are all married and live happily to the end of their lives." The same thing is strikingly shown in the parable of the good Samaritan; if our blessed LORD, instead of relating this touching story had merely given us the substance of it in a dry precept, by saying, "do to others as you would be done by," or "love your neighbour as yourself," we should not have treasured the lesson up in our hearts half so securely as we now do. The biography of the good Samaritan is read with pleasure by old and young wherever the Gospel extends, and it will never lose any of its interest while compassion and calamity meet in the thoroughfare of life. Biography is the most pleasing vehicle of conveying lessons. And Wellington's biography can show us, both a high mark to aim at, and also how much can be achieved by one man if he be only in earnest. Another argument with which I fortified the choice of my subject was our ignorance of Wellington. We all know something of him; there was hardly a child who would not have recognized him if he had passed, yet speaking generally, I believe the English people are but little aware of how much they owe him, and fewer still know the marvellous fulness and completeness of his character. Nor is this so hard to account for, because modern history lies over so much ground that few can read it. The materials are so abundant that volumes are written now where it was difficult to collect material for pages in olden time. And on no subject is history more voluminous than on the Duke and the stirring events in which he was the chief actor. It takes a small library to contain all the books which it is necessary to read in order to appreciate the Duke's career. For this obvious reason we know perhaps less of Wellington than of Hannibal or Alexander the Great, and we should less know where to search for materials to write an essay on the Peninsular war, than we should on Marathon or Thermopylæ. It is therefore useful, and I may say almost necessary, to read these things in epitomes or sketches, where we may glean the marrow without wading through all the details, and get a fair estimate of a man and his times without reading volumes which are nevertheless the proper and legitimate labours of an historian; for an historian writes books, which being volumes of reference for posterity, would be imperfect if they were cursory and incomplete. It is the object of this lecture-may I not say it is the object of all lectures ?—to present a correct view of a large subject at one glance, to give you samples rather than the whole materials. And is not this what makes lectures of this kind so appropriate a vehicle of communicating knowledge? I may say the popular way of conveying knowledge, especially to mechanics, men who having been working all day and want a great deal said in a little time, and that in an interesting manner, so that their attention may be kept up and not suffered to flag. Thus, speaking for myself, I have gained much time by some of the lectures I have attended at this institution, because I have gleaned in an hour from the lips of some of your lecturers information which I daresay cost them much labour to collect. Supposing, as is the case in some districts, a number of mechanics give lectures by turns to each other, it is then simply a distribution of labour; each man turns his attention to a particular subject, masters it, and then gives the result of his reading to the others, and takes theirs in return; it is even thus among men of equal talents a wise economy of study and time. What I want to bring out most strongly before you, |